Thank you, Carrie, for this gift

Carrie's post on families and eating disorders is so wonderful, so important, and so well-expressed. I hope people hear it - inside the ED world and outside. This is what the public needs to know:

The real relationship between families and eating disorders

Comments

  1. It seems obvious to me that eating disorders will cause conflict within the family. After all, the parents want the kid to eat, and the illness will not want the kid to eat. This situation is not dysfunctional, it's natural and even necessary.

    Also, why is it that the dad is considered, in Carrie's post, to be "dysfunctional" merely because he is "distant and unemotional?" If the dad were otherwise, he'd be called the opposite: enmeshed and high in expressed emotion. The difference between the two is arbitrary and subjective.

    Parents are better off, in my opinion, ignoring the messages they receive about so-called family dysfunction. These messages are nothing more than a red herring. Let's put our energy, instead, into overcoming the illness, not placing capricious labels on families.

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  2. Good on Carrie :)

    I am so, so glad that no professional ever hinted at blaming my parents for my AN.

    First, they didn't cause my AN.

    Second, it would have destroyed them had they been blamed. My mother, in particular blamed herslef for years for having perhaps made some tiny mistake (goodness knows what...) that triggered my anorexic behaviours.

    Over the last year I have come into contact with so many wonderful parents who are doing their utmost to help their child through an ED. It's been a privilege to get to know these parents - who care deeply about their children.

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